Just you wait for me blooming exotic
verbals

Shaw said that the integrated text of his
five-act Eliza Doolittle romance and the 1938 film version could only be
performed in the cinema or 'on stages furnished with exceptionally elaborate
machinery'.

The RNT's Pygmalion in the Olivier fits
the bill: William Dudley's ambitiously uneven designs transport us from a
rainswept Covent Garden church portico to the Wimpole Street phoneticians' den
(replete with phonographs, wax cylinders and a trumpet-tubed organ), across a
raised bridge and a palm court orchestra at the Embassy ball, and to Mrs
Higgins's exotic garden flat on the Chelsea Embankment.

There are other surprises: Eliza's bath is
administered in full view by an alert, rather than fussing, Mrs Pearce (Alison
Fiske); the more traditional attempted exposure of Eliza by Higgins's Hungarian
protégé Neppomuck is incorporated (with the ballroom scene) from
the film; there are minor additions from the 1913 first draft.

These new connections - some were aired at the
Glasgow Citizens in 1979 - are given resonance by the triumphant reinstatement
of Alan Howard, whose uncle Leslie played suavely opposite Wendy Hiller in the
film, as Higgins.

Howard strikes to the moody, ethereal heart of
Higgins and gives us one of his major poetic performances. His ear for nuances
of dialogue is comically balanced against his myopic relationship with
furniture and other peoples' feelings.

And in partnering him with Frances Barber as
Eliza, director Howard Davies has struck gold. Their last long scene, played in
a twisting skein of self-deception, emotional confusion and bitter acceptance,
rounds off a notable duet, whose sonic features are his casual, flicking
airiness and her squall of catty squeals.

Howard, abetted by Robin Bailey's ruby-rich
vowelled Pickering, withstands Barber's assaults with the mellifluous
springiness of a fine old concertina. And Barber stiffens to a very funny,
perfectly timed moving statue at the trial tea party before embarking on her
elegant physical and spiritual transformation. The range of her performance,
vocally and intellectually, marks the highest achievement of her career since
the RSC Camille.